CoachDynamix celebrates 10 years in Luxembourg

Luxembourg corporate coaching company CoachDynamix celebrated ten years in September. Wort.lu/en spoke with Managing Partner Monica Jonsson about corporate coaching in Luxembourg, how it has developed over the past decade and what it takes to offer good coaching.

09.10.2013

By Margaret Ferns

This September, the corporate coaching company CoachDynamix celebrated its 10th anniversary in Luxembourg. It marked the occasion by making a charitable donation to the Luxembourg children’s cancer charity "Foundatioun Kriibskrank Kanner", saying that it shared the charity’s philosophy of support and empowerment and that it wanted to give back to the community that had become home and supported its success over the last decade.

Established in 2003, CoachDynamix was Luxembourg’s first company specialising in offering corporate coaching services to the business community, with clients today ranging from corporate executives (CEOs to managers) to entrepreneurs from every sector of activity in Luxembourg.

In the following Q&A, Founder and Managing Partner, Monica Jonsson discusses how she has seen the coaching business evolve of the last decade and reveals some of the secrets of CoachDynamix’s success.

Q: How do you define coaching?

A: Coaching is customised professional development that improves performance, produces business results and helps drive organisational change. At CoachDynamix, coaching takes three forms – individual, team and group. Individual coaching is aimed at improving the performance of valued individuals (CEO to manager). The purpose of team coaching is to enhance a team’s performance by improving the collaboration and atmosphere within its members and group coaching is designed to increase organisational awareness of business missions, goals and culture. In each case the coach acts as a catalyst, working alongside clients to significantly increase their awareness and focus on reaching their goals faster than they would do on their own.

Q: What would you say are its key benefits?

A: Coaching is highly customised. This means that it focuses precisely on the exact objectives of the company, taking its values, culture and legacy into account. This approach accelerates learning and produces long term results. At CoachDynamix, each of our coaches has a solid corporate background. This gives us a fundamental understanding of the realities companies are operating in, which leads to a meaningful and targeted collaboration with our clients.

Q: How have you seen coaching evolve over the last 10 years?

A: When I first set up CoachDynamix in Luxembourg back in 2003, I was a pioneer in the area of coaching. No-one really understood what it was about and what it could achieve. So, back then a lot of my time was spent educating the market about the remarkable potential of coaching and as our clients started to pilot our services they could witness this potential first hand. Now more than ever coaching has become part of business strategy, helping companies see what their future needs to be. Coaching hammers home the message that companies need to look forward based on an understanding of the reality that the past is not coming back.

Since 2008, companies have been questioning existing business models for their future survival. This generates great uncertainty and coaching is a highly effective way of helping to manage change during such times.

What is also interesting to note is that, while many companies have slashed training budgets, coaching is still on the agenda. The reason for this is simple. When you have to do more with less, people really need to collaborate and work together. Coaching improves team collaboration.

Q: Has anything surprised you over the last decade?

A: I am sometimes surprised and a little bit saddened by the way people can react in difficult times. Uncertainty breeds fear and this, in turn, can lead to a blame culture and protectionism at a time when everyone should be sticking together. As I mentioned before, team coaching can really help with this.

It can also lead to a “disconnect” between management (who are also overwhelmed and under tremendous pressure) and staff. Coaching can help bridge this gap by assisting management to take constructive action and help create a healthy corporate culture.

Q: CoachDynamix has continued to grow despite difficult times, what that the secrets of its success?

A: At CoachDynamix coaching is our core business, that is to say that it is our only business activity. This has allowed us to focus on developing highly results-oriented solutions that are tailored to the needs of each organisation and its people. This is very important. As CEOs have seen results as a direct consequence of coaching we have seen a greater demand for our services.

As I mentioned before, the fact that all our coaches have solid corporate backgrounds is greatly appreciated by companies. It not only accelerates the learning process, but means that we can provide coaching based on a real understanding of the realities of business world.

Q. CoachDynamix is also active on the topic of Gender Balance, can you elaborate?

Yes, we have engaged ourselves in this topic because, as former senior corporate women, it lies close to our hearts and we wish to positively contribute to the debate by doing our part to help raise awareness and provide new perspectives on why gender balance is not simply a “good idea” but why it is “good for business”.

As such we have conducted several public workshops (World Peace Forum, PaperJam) on the issue to help raise awareness in general.

We have also developed a complete methodology to assist our client companies in implementing gender balance in their organisations through a project management approach including the principles of coaching.

Q. Any final words?

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each member of the CoachDynamix team for their hard work over the years, as well as thank our clients for their continued confidence in us.